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Personality and Wholeness in Therapy: Integrating 9 Patterns of Developmental Pathways in Clinical Practice
A new way to consider patterns of personality, with the combined application of neurobiology and traditional wisdom.
Personality and Wholeness in Psychotherapy applies the perspective of interpersonal neurobiology to a traditional wisdom framework widely known as the Enneagram of Personality. This framework describes a lifespan developmental personality model of nine distinct, key strategies that people use to make sense of and cope with their experiences and interactions with the world. These strategies can be understood as nine Patterns of Developmental Pathways, or PDPs.
This book provides mental health practitioners with both a theoretical understanding of PDPs and practical tools for implementing the framework in clinical settings. Readers will find detailed descriptions of the nine core patterns of personality as well as integrative practices specific to each of these patterns that can help people work towards states of well-being and wholeness. This innovative book has the potential to unlock deep and lasting change in problematic and perplexing patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, transforming personality from a prison to a playground for readers and clients alike.
Personality and Wholeness in Psychotherapy applies the perspective of interpersonal neurobiology to a traditional wisdom framework widely known as the Enneagram of Personality. This framework describes a lifespan developmental personality model of nine distinct, key strategies that people use to make sense of and cope with their experiences and interactions with the world. These strategies can be understood as nine Patterns of Developmental Pathways, or PDPs.
This book provides mental health practitioners with both a theoretical understanding of PDPs and practical tools for implementing the framework in clinical settings. Readers will find detailed descriptions of the nine core patterns of personality as well as integrative practices specific to each of these patterns that can help people work towards states of well-being and wholeness. This innovative book has the potential to unlock deep and lasting change in problematic and perplexing patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, transforming personality from a prison to a playground for readers and clients alike.
- GenresParenting
1 pages, Audio CD
Published February 18, 2025
46 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
About the author
Daniel J. Siegel
189 books3,228 followersDaniel J. Siegel, M.D., is an internationally acclaimed author, award-winning educator, and child psychiatrist. Dr. Siegel received his medical degree from Harvard University and completed his postgraduate medical education at UCLA with training in pediatrics and child, adolescent and adult psychiatry. He is currently a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, where he also serves as a co-investigator at the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development, and is a founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center. In addition, Dr. Siegel is the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute.
Dr. Siegel has the unique ability to convey complicated scientific concepts in a concise and comprehensible way that all readers can enjoy. He has become known for his research in Interpersonal Neurobiology – an interdisciplinary view that creates a framework for the understanding of our subjective and interpersonal lives. In his most recent works, Dr. Siegel explores how mindfulness practices can aid the process of interpersonal and intrapersonal attunement, leading to personal growth and well-being.
Published author of several highly acclaimed works, Dr. Siegel’s books include the New York Times’ bestseller “Brainstorm”, along with "Mindsight," "The Developing Mind," "The Mindful Brain," "The Mindful Therapist," in addition to co-authoring "Parenting From the Inside Out," with Mary Hartzell and "The Whole-Brain Child," with Tina Bryson. He is also the Founding Editor of the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, which includes "Healing Trauma," "The Power of Emotion," and "Trauma and the Body." Dr. Siegel currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife.
For more information on Dr. Siegel's work, please visit DrDanSiegel.com.
Dr. Siegel has the unique ability to convey complicated scientific concepts in a concise and comprehensible way that all readers can enjoy. He has become known for his research in Interpersonal Neurobiology – an interdisciplinary view that creates a framework for the understanding of our subjective and interpersonal lives. In his most recent works, Dr. Siegel explores how mindfulness practices can aid the process of interpersonal and intrapersonal attunement, leading to personal growth and well-being.
Published author of several highly acclaimed works, Dr. Siegel’s books include the New York Times’ bestseller “Brainstorm”, along with "Mindsight," "The Developing Mind," "The Mindful Brain," "The Mindful Therapist," in addition to co-authoring "Parenting From the Inside Out," with Mary Hartzell and "The Whole-Brain Child," with Tina Bryson. He is also the Founding Editor of the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, which includes "Healing Trauma," "The Power of Emotion," and "Trauma and the Body." Dr. Siegel currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife.
For more information on Dr. Siegel's work, please visit DrDanSiegel.com.
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December 29, 2025
This was a challenging read for me - in some ways positive, and some negative.
Over anything, I was really excited and am satisfied with how this book lays a theoretical foundation for a neuroscientific view of the Enneagram. As a student of the Enneagram, some of the mysticism and sacred mathematics always felt a little too esoteric for me, and the PDP framework frees up the individual from having such a "locked in" view of wings and lines of integration. The PDP truly is a strengths-based approach where the traditional Enneagram hopes to be but ultimately falls short. I also really appreciate how honest Siegel is about how seminal this theory is and that it needs intensive validation in research. Siegel's Cd (Type 6) personality pattern moves him to ensure the reader hold a healthy does of skepticism.
That being said, Siegel's writing style (perhaps influenced by that same pattern) was really hard for me to follow at times. He repeats himself a lot - seemingly to ensure understanding - but this style of communication is better suited for lecturing that a book format, where a person can choose how long to spend on each concept, re-reading as needed. Siegel and the PDP group have come up with so many acronyms and isms that they use to explain interpersonal neurobiology and the PDP perspective that it sometimes feels like alphabet soup (and even then, the acronym is spelled out afterards, in most cases). Siegel's writing is full of run-on sentences, over-hyphenated phrases, acronyms, and isms, which are frequently repeated. This is what made the writing difficult to digest.
Lastly, if you're considering reading the book, you should know that Siegal draws on his understanding of quantum physics as well as his own system of interpersonal neurobiology quite a bit. Having not read any of his previous work, this was a hurdle for me in understanding the PDP framework. Much of it will probably be familiar to those who have learned from Siegel in the past.
P.S. David Daniels' site mentions that the book incorrectly labels Type 5 as Ci when it should be Co, and Type 7 as Co when it should be Type 5 - this aligns the pathways with the Enneagram harmonic traids. It's unclear whether this is the PDP group's perspective as a whole, or just the view of the Daniels organization. If it is the PDP group's shared perspective, then it feels like a massive oversight that this was not addressed in the 20 years of research before publishing the book.
Over anything, I was really excited and am satisfied with how this book lays a theoretical foundation for a neuroscientific view of the Enneagram. As a student of the Enneagram, some of the mysticism and sacred mathematics always felt a little too esoteric for me, and the PDP framework frees up the individual from having such a "locked in" view of wings and lines of integration. The PDP truly is a strengths-based approach where the traditional Enneagram hopes to be but ultimately falls short. I also really appreciate how honest Siegel is about how seminal this theory is and that it needs intensive validation in research. Siegel's Cd (Type 6) personality pattern moves him to ensure the reader hold a healthy does of skepticism.
That being said, Siegel's writing style (perhaps influenced by that same pattern) was really hard for me to follow at times. He repeats himself a lot - seemingly to ensure understanding - but this style of communication is better suited for lecturing that a book format, where a person can choose how long to spend on each concept, re-reading as needed. Siegel and the PDP group have come up with so many acronyms and isms that they use to explain interpersonal neurobiology and the PDP perspective that it sometimes feels like alphabet soup (and even then, the acronym is spelled out afterards, in most cases). Siegel's writing is full of run-on sentences, over-hyphenated phrases, acronyms, and isms, which are frequently repeated. This is what made the writing difficult to digest.
Lastly, if you're considering reading the book, you should know that Siegal draws on his understanding of quantum physics as well as his own system of interpersonal neurobiology quite a bit. Having not read any of his previous work, this was a hurdle for me in understanding the PDP framework. Much of it will probably be familiar to those who have learned from Siegel in the past.
P.S. David Daniels' site mentions that the book incorrectly labels Type 5 as Ci when it should be Co, and Type 7 as Co when it should be Type 5 - this aligns the pathways with the Enneagram harmonic traids. It's unclear whether this is the PDP group's perspective as a whole, or just the view of the Daniels organization. If it is the PDP group's shared perspective, then it feels like a massive oversight that this was not addressed in the 20 years of research before publishing the book.
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